White House Rejects Comey’s Assertion That Wiretapping Claim Is False

WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday refused to acknowledge reports that James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, had asked the Justice Department to refute President Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 presidential campaign, and said Mr. Trump still believes he was spied on.

Mr. Comey urged the Justice Department this weekend to push back against Mr. Trump’s claims, but the department has not said anything publicly. The New York Times first reported about Mr. Comey’s request to the Justice Department on Sunday, and other news media organizations followed suit.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, dismissed the stories on Monday. “I have not seen anything, aside from another report based on anonymous sources, that that actually happened,” Mr. Spicer said. “I’m not aware that that occurred. I don’t think that we’re aware that that occurred.”

Mr. Spicer did not say why Mr. Trump or other administration officials had not reached out directly to the Justice Department or Mr. Comey to find out whether Mr. Trump’s accusations are true. And Mr. Spicer provided little evidence to back up Mr. Trump’s claim about Mr. Obama.

At one point, Mr. Spicer pointed to comments by Michael Mukasey, who served as attorney general in the administration of George W. Bush, as evidence of the eavesdropping. Mr. Mukasey said on television Sunday that based on reports he had read in the press, he believed Mr. Trump was probably right about the surveillance.

“There’s no question that something happened,” Mr. Spicer said. “The question is: Is it surveillance, or wiretapping or whatever?”

Mr. Spicer said that Mr. Trump still had confidence in the F.B.I. director. “There’s nothing that I have been told by him that would leave me to believe that anything is different than it was prior,” Mr. Spicer said.

But the president could be headed for a confrontation with Mr. Comey that would pit the administration against the head of the nation’s leading law enforcement agency, which is conducting an inquiry into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Trump, who has already fired his national security adviser and acting attorney general, could dismiss Mr. Comey, but that would probably lead to significant backlash from lawmakers and federal authorities who would see such a move as an attempt to influence the Russia investigation.

Mr. Trump started the controversy early Saturday morning with a series of Twitter posts.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” Mr. Trump said. “Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Mr. Trump added: “This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

The White House has not officially said what led Mr. Trump to make the claims. But administration officials have acknowledged that they were primarily prompted by unverified claims by Breitbart News and conservative talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing tapping the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides.

Mr. Comey was said to be disturbed by Mr. Trump’s claims about Mr. Obama, which insinuated that the F.B.I. had broken the law and raised the public’s expectations about how much evidence federal authorities might have had on Mr. Trump. For the Justice Department to have obtained a warrant to eavesdrop on him, federal authorities would have had to prove to a judge that there was significant evidence that he was breaking the law or was the agent of a foreign power.

Along with asking the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to investigate whether Mr. Obama eavesdropped on Mr. Trump, Mr. Spicer called on the committees to investigate what he called a steady stream of national security leaks since Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Spicer said the White House would not commit to accepting the findings of those investigations.

Some Republicans said on Monday that spying was a hallmark of Mr. Obama’s administration, claiming that during his time in office the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups. Other Republicans defended the impartiality of the Justice Department and F.B.I.

“I don’t think the F.B.I. is the Obama team, and I don’t think the men and women who are career prosecutors at D.O.J. belong to any team other than a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales,” Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview on Fox News.

“We have certain tools this country needs to keep us safe — and it is great and wise and prudent and legal for those tools to be used lawfully and appropriately,” Mr. Gowdy said, referring to court-approved wiretapping. “If they are not used lawfully and appropriately, there is a paper trail, and we will be able to find it out.”

Mr. Gowdy, who headed the committee that investigated the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, said that with the Obama administration out of office, “any information that the current Department of Justice has that suggests the previous Department of Justice acted inappropriately — they are welcome to release it.”

Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said he had “never seen anything so outlandish, outrageous or incomprehensible” as Mr. Trump’s claims.

“I’ve never seen anything like this — ever — since I’ve been here,” Mr. Leahy said. “It is completely unprecedented, and it is destructive of our democracy.”

Mark Landler and Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: White House Dismisses Reports About Comey’s Request on Tapping Claim. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe